RANT: MY, MY! HOW CLEVER!

 

I WAS LISTENING RECENTLY to a recording of Martin Luther King’s remarkable speech “Beyond Vietnam” which he made at the Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, where he lays out, in no uncertain terms, his opposition to the war, and how the three scourges of racism, materialism and militarism, must be defeated if democracy and democratic societies are to survive:

 

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” (MLK, “Beyond Vietnam”)

 

HE SPOKE THOSE WORDS exactly one year to the day before he would be assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a rally in support of that city’s striking sanitation workers. Today, almost fifty-five years after King made his address before the packed congregation gathered at the iconic church overlooking the Hudson River, it doesn’t seem as if we—Americans, Canadians, all of us—have heeded his warnings. RECENTLY, we’ve all been transfixed by the fighting in Ukraine, almost grateful the conflict has given us something to think about besides viruses and lockdowns. But the scourge of militarism, what writer Chris Hedges calls “a fatal disease”, has infected the body politic of western nations to an extent I think would have shocked MLK were he alive today.

 

THE LEVEL of jingoistic drum-beating that’s erupted across much of Europe, and the acrimony and bile that has characterized most diplomatic exchanges between Russia and the collective West haven’t been seen since the darkest days of the Cold War.  DAILY, we are bombarded with disturbing footage of cities levelled, neighbourhoods destroyed, factories and farms in ruins, and we hear reports of war crimes (on both sides), as well as insistent demands for more weapons, more soldiers, and equipment. On our screens, we are shown colourful maps displaying the “evolving” front lines of troop movements, “hot” zones and “cleared” areas; projected daily wins and losses* and, of course, the death-counts of soldiers and civilians, along with endless other statistics, war plan analysis, and  politicians endlessly spewing cant—all obscured by the fog of war, all leaving us unsure of any outcome when it is accompanied by chill winds that augur neither peace nor compromise any time soon in those breaking fields, cities and borderlands of Eastern Europe.

WE HAVE BEEN TOLD we must pick a side. To choose. To stand in solidarity¹ with…. But there is really only one side—ours. We are not meant to ask how this all came to pass, how it got to this point, and which decisions, whose orders, and what vested interests were finally to trigger Russia’s February 24^th invasion of Ukraine. Instead, we are asked to accept caricatures of “good guys” and “bad guys”, along with political analysis that is often cartoon-ish, and would be laughable if events in that war-torn country weren’t so bloody and so awful for so many.

IN HIS SPEECH, MLK pleads for compassion and understanding of “the enemy”; here he refers to the Viet Cong and communist-ruled North Vietnam:

 

“Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view, we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.”

 

SADLY, TODAY there is little by way of the compassion and understanding that King spoke of. His call to seek those common truths that all of us share as human beings and not be led by the temporary estrangements that divide us, has mostly gone unheeded.  He says: “The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.” "For the world," he goes on, “demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning.” [He was speaking of the Vietnam war—but really, any war, all wars.]

 

But, make no mistake, Russia did invade Ukraine—illegally—despite its claim of justification under Article 51 of the UN charter which allows aggression against another country whereby:

 

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” (United Nations Charter, Chapter VII)

 

THE INITIATIVE was theirs. It is a grey legal area Russia has entered with its 21 February recognition of the self-proclaimed breakaway states of Donetsk and Luhansk. Russia formally recognized the two eastern Ukraine regions as legitimate states and quickly moved to forge formal treaty ties and security pacts with the new republics that Moscow says legitimizes its decision to send peacekeepers into the Donbas under the guise of “collective self-defence”. This came after months of Russian military manoeuvres and the massing of troops along its border with Ukraine and battle group deployments within Russia’s ally, neighbouring Belarus.

 

PERHAPS SOMEDAY the legality of Russia’s invasion will be formally adjudicated by international legal bodies and the United Nations, but for now it’s clear that Russia invaded Ukraine under a flimsy pretext, and as the current situation stands, four months into the “special operations” campaign, most of the Donbas and a significant portion of the Black Sea coast to Crimea is under Russian control. Yet, Kiev remains defiant and there is little talk of peace negotiations as of this writing.

 

SO: RUSSIA IS BAD; Ukraine is good; the United States and its Western allies stand securely on the right side of history. Right? But, only if the decades-long record of bad faith negotiations, broken promises and the deliberate ratcheting-up of tensions with Russia by the collective West, is ignored. Granted, Russia is the aggressor here, but is its aggression without antecedents? Was this war an unprovoked, mad  grab for land and resources by its would-be Peter-the-Great president, Vladimir Putin? I would argue it is not without significant precedents and that the war was provoked, to a large extent, by the actions of the West, and that conquering land and resources was not the main goal in Putin’s war plans. Russia’s rationale (but not justification) for its invasion of Ukraine is summarized in an excellent ScheerPost article by Bryce Greene. He does a much better job that I can describing malfeasance on the part of the United States and its allies, and how they ignored and downplayed Moscow’s legitimate security concerns for years, while NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, pushed ever-eastward toward Russian borders, resulting, now, in  war between quasi-NATO Ukraine and a frustrated and dangerously provoked Russia. (Such an outcome was desired by the United States and done in order to weaken Russia, and bring about regime change there.)

Again, Russia is in the wrong, here. It invaded Ukraine and has wrecked havoc and destruction throughout its eastern borderlands. But does that mean we in the West are automatically in the right? Are we the good guys with white hats? Greene’s article provides a more nuanced view of the situation.

 

AS MLK SAID of the Viet Cong rebels in South Vietnam, against whom America would mass an army of nearly 500,000 troops by 1967:

“Surely, we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely, we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely, we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.”

And PRESIDENT TRUMP’S rash 2019 decision to tear up the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) treaty, further destabilized the delicate balance of peace in Europe, but this time with the added horror of the potential for nuclear engagement, if the United States and NATO are foolish enough to establish forward bases  equipped with nuclear warhead-capable missile systems near Russia's borders. Promoting a PROXY WAR in Ukraine and hoping the conflict will become Russia's second Afghanistan is a dangerous, reckless policy. 

 

INSTEAD of supplying Ukraine with bombs and missiles, we should be sending humanitarian aid and demanding our governments promote a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Our failure to do so speaks to a spiritual malaise found throughout the collective West and a growing nihilism that bodes ill for all of us. As Martin Luther King warned in “Beyond Vietnam”: “Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now.” Truer words have never been spoken. Then. Or now.

 

Cheers, Jake.

_____________________________

  

* At this toxic gaming table, add the wild card of a wider war, one that comes with the possibility of nuclear conflict—something I had not thought to see in my lifetime.

 

^1. The only side we should be standing with is on the side of the Ukrainian people, whose suffering we witness daily. And for the soldiers, of both armies, who are killed and wounded in a war that should never have happened, led by leaders who should never have been allowed to lead.       

 

 

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